


no matter the distance, I’m holding your hand

by suzukiblu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Amnesia, Confusion, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Fuck Or Suffer Unspecified Health Consequences, Internalized Dehumanization, Kidnapping, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, No Sex, Off-Screen Masturbation, Omega Steve Rogers, Praise Kink, References to Past Physical Abuse, asset!bucky, suppressants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-05 23:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15182012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: “Your body temperature is elevated,” the asset says. “And you stink.”“Of course,” the captain mutters, tilting his head back against the bed. “I make it through every other alpha in the twenty-first century just fine, but five minutes aroundyousets me off.”





	no matter the distance, I’m holding your hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



> This is for zepysgirl, who wanted something based on [this meta](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/post/128526812993/so-ive-read-a-couple-of-abo-fics-where-steve) an anon once sent me. It didn’t wind up _exactly_ like the original meta and I ended up going over the intended word count, whoops, but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.

The mission smells like--the mission smells--the mission _feels_ \--

The asset doesn’t have the words. The mission smells-- _sweet_ , it wants to say, though it doesn’t know what “sweet” really means. 

It means the way the mission smells, apparently. 

The mission smells sweet, even soaked in river water and blood, and the asset doesn’t know what to do about that. 

“Bucky?” the mission murmurs faintly, his eyes only barely opening, and the asset’s ears prick. It knows that name. Or at least, it knows that voice _saying_ that name. 

The mission needs something. He only sounds like that when he needs something. 

The asset has no idea what that “something” might be. It leans over the mission with a critical eye, trying to figure out what’s wrong with him, and the mission makes a soft noise but slips back into full unconsciousness without saying anything else. The asset should leave him here, but . . . 

It knows that voice. 

.

.

.

The asset takes the mission. “Mission” isn’t the right word, some part of it thinks, but it’s the only word that fits--this is its job, its to take care of, its _responsibility_. 

The asset isn’t sure how to be responsible for something, aside from being to blame for it. All the same, it knows beyond a shadow of a doubt: the mission is its responsibility. 

So it takes him, and it steals, in order: a vehicle, a hat, clothes, and three wallets. With the contents of the wallets, it buys food and water. It doesn’t need the food and water immediately--especially not the several days’ worth it purchases--but the part of it that keeps insisting the mission is its responsibility insists on that as well. 

It also insists the asset buy caramel. 

The asset understands very little of either what is going on or its own thoughts, but it knows it does not want the mission to die and it knows it does not want its handlers to reclaim it. If its handlers reclaimed it, the mission would die. If the mission died, its handlers would reclaim it. 

The mission is still unconscious. The asset hurt it very badly. 

It buys a first aid kit and rents a motel room. It takes the mission into the motel room and draws the blinds and barricades the door. It strips the mission down, then patches up the wounds that haven’t stopped bleeding of their own accord and cleans up the rest. The mission stirs once or twice, but never wakes up. The asset checks the mission for signs of concussion and checks the room for listening devices. Neither search is fruitful. The mission’s temperature is elevated, though. 

The mission smells like burnt sugar and sweat. 

The asset takes first watch. 

.

.

.

The mission sleeps for a long, long time. 

.

.

.

The mission sleeps for a long, long time, until it doesn’t. 

The mission wakes up with a stifled groan and the asset looks up from the gun it’s been cleaning and waits. The mission, it knows, will know what to do. The mission inhales, scenting the air, and then--

“Bucky?” he says hoarsely. 

“Captain,” the asset replies. Its handlers referred to the mission as a captain, previously. It thinks it might’ve too, a very long lifetime ago. 

“Bucky,” the mission says, and tries to get up with a hiss of pain. The asset considers pushing him back down before he injures himself worse, but the stupid punk is never gonna learn otherwise. 

Then again, since when has he ever? 

The asset gets up and pushes the mission down and holds him against the mattress. The mission stares up at it with dark eyes and grips its arms, but doesn’t resist. The asset frowns. The mission always resists, that separate part of it insists. The mission would resist until it _killed_ him, if it came to it. 

Perhaps the asset killed him after all, it thinks. 

“Bucky,” the mission says roughly, then coughs to clear his throat. His voice stays raspy. “Where are we?” 

“I removed you to a secure secondary location,” the asset says. 

The mission’s eyes flare and he looks around the room, that burned-sugar scent spiking in--alarm? Concern? “HYDRA--” 

“HYDRA is not secure,” the asset says. “I procured this location without assistance.” 

The mission--the captain, perhaps?--the captain breathes out, and his eyes close for a moment. The asset searches his face, looking for answers to questions it can barely form coherently enough to ask. 

Captain. Yes. Not mission. 

“Your body temperature is elevated,” the asset says. “And you stink.” 

“Of course,” the captain mutters, tilting his head back against the bed. “I make it through every other alpha in the twenty-first century just fine, but five minutes around _you_ sets me off.” 

“You’re angry?” the asset says, frowning again. The captain hasn’t hit it. 

“What--no,” the captain says, opening his eyes to frown back at it. “Where are my clothes?” 

“The floor,” the asset says, and the captain rolls to his side stiffly and looks over the side of the bed. The asset lets him. The captain knows what he needs, after all. He’ll tell it soon enough, and then it can give it to him. 

“I need to get dressed,” the captain says. 

The asset . . . frowns. That doesn’t sound right. 

“You stink,” it says again. That seems very important, for some reason. The captain laughs. 

“Romantic as ever,” he drawls. “Yeah, I do. So I need to get back to Natasha.” 

“Natasha,” the asset echoes. 

“She’s my heat partner,” the captain says. The asset feels--strange, for some reason. It doesn’t know what a heat partner is, but hearing that someone is one to the captain . . . it feels _strange_ , hearing that. 

“You’re not supposed to see other people when you’re like this,” it says. It doesn’t know where the knowledge comes from, but it _knows_ it all the same. 

“Yeah, so _Natasha_ ,” the captain says, briefly looking very tired. “You know I can’t go to Peggy or Morita anymore, right?” 

“No,” the asset says. It doesn’t recognize those designations. Or--it thinks it doesn’t. Is almost sure. But either way, those operatives are strangers, and the captain is not supposed to be around strangers right now. 

The asset is a stranger, but that’s . . . that’s different. 

“Let me up,” the captain says. The asset--hesitates. The captain doesn’t hit it, but waits expectantly. The asset lets him up. “Thank you.” 

The asset . . . blinks. In the time it takes it process that, the captain has already collected all his clothing and thrown it on the bed and is in the process of pulling on his undershirt with an unpleasant grimace. 

“You’re aggravating your injuries” the asset says. 

“I’m going into _heat_ , Buck,” the captain says. “I told you. I need a heat partner. And you need . . . I don’t know what you need, actually, but _I_ want you someplace safer than some random motel in--” He looks around the room, and the asset waits. “In wherever we are. Where are we, Bucky?” 

“A motel,” the asset says. 

“. . . in?” The captain raises his eyebrows. 

“. . . a motel?” the asset tries. The captain stares at it for a long moment, and the asset blinks back at him. 

“Right,” the captain says eventually as he pulls on his pants. “Wait here.” 

The captain leaves. The asset--waits. Even though everything in it is _screaming_ to follow the captain, it follows its orders. 

The captain comes back. 

“How long was I unconscious?” he asks. 

“Twelve hours and forty-two minutes,” the asset answers. 

“Right.” The captain rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Bucky. We’re in _Indiana_.” 

“. . . yes?” the asset guesses. It had only driven. It hadn’t paid much attention to where it’d been going, only if it was being pursued. It had not been pursued. 

“Jesus,” the captain says, then picks up the room phone and dials. The asset watches, feeling uncomfortable. The captain keeps going _away_ from it. The captain should be closer. Safer. It’s _sure_ of that. “Natasha?” 

The asset _scowls_. 

“Oh good, you’re alive,” the phone says casually. The asset relaxes slightly. It knows that voice. It doesn’t remember how, precisely, but it doesn’t remember how it knows the captain either. It’s the people it remembers that are dangerous, at least right now. “You know we’ve been dredging the river for your body for the past six hours, right?” 

The captain winces. The asset checks to make sure none of his wounds have reopened. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve been unconscious.” 

“Unconscious in _Indiana_ ,” the phone says. 

“More or less,” the captain says, then sighs and runs a hand back over his head. He looks . . . restless. 

“We’ll be there in three hours,” the phone says. 

“Great,” the captain says with a mirthless smile, rubbing the back of his head. He looks _very_ restless. “I’ll be in heat.” 

“You’ll _what_?” 

“Bucky pulled me out,” the captain says. “Apparently my body decided that was code for ‘alpha’s home, time to get bred’. Which--he smells like about seventy years’ worth of suppressants and is calling me ‘Captain’, so you can guess how well _that’s_ going to go for me.” 

“Hell,” the phone says. “How gone are you?” 

“The beta at the front desk nearly bit her tongue in half when I went to talk to her,” the captain says. 

“ _Hell._ Stark! Get me a jet _now_!” 

“Get you a _what_ \--” some other voice demands from the phone, and the asset finds itself frowning again. It doesn’t like the phone. 

The captain is looking at the asset with a very strange expression on his face. The asset can’t place it. 

“You need something,” it says. 

“Just a bit,” the captain sighs. 

“I can’t give it to you?” the asset asks, and the captain--a _shudder _goes through him. His face is already red; it gets much redder. Is his fever worsening?__

“Believe me, I wish you could,” he says. 

.

.

.

The captain spends several more minutes on the phone, then hangs up and sits down on the bed and stares at the wall. The phone offered to “talk him through it”, but he declined because--quoted--“believe me, Nat, that’d only make it worse”. 

The asset doesn’t know what “worse” would be. The captain is already wounded, and is becoming increasingly flushed. His breathing is labored. The burned sugar scent of him has filled the room so completely that the asset can _taste_ it. 

And he _squirmed_ when the phone offered to talk him through it.

He needs something.

Right now, though, all he’s doing is staring at that wall. The asset stares at it for some time too, but finds nothing useful there. It considers, then retreats to the food it had purchased and brings back a box of granola bars and a bottle of water. 

When in doubt, start with the basics. 

The captain takes one look at the box and bottle and snatches both. He tears his way through the granola bars with military efficiency and drains the water bottle in one long, long swallow. 

The asset gets him another bottle. 

The captain keeps staring at that same spot on the wall, only smelling more and more sugar-sweet. 

Two hours and fifty-four minutes to go. 

.

.

.

“I can talk you through it,” the asset says, eventually. The captain declined the phone, but the asset knows _it_ has what the captain needs. It’s not sure how to find it, but it know it’s there.

The captain blinks at it, pupils dilated to little pinpricks. His eyes are very blue. 

“You really can’t, Buck,” he says. 

“I can.” The asset sits down next to the captain on the bed. It seems like the thing to do. “Tell me what to say.” 

“Yeah, see?” The captain smiles painfully at the wall. “If you don’t know, I’m not gonna make you.” 

The asset does not understand. 

.

.

.

The captain is panting. He sounds very badly wounded indeed. 

He won’t let the asset look at him, though.

Two hours and thirty-eight minutes to go.

.

.

.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” the captain curses, curling in on himself and clutching at his lower abdomen. He is in very obvious pain, and still will not let the asset look at him or tell it what to do. He keeps insisting that the asset doesn’t know, so can’t do it.

The asset has done all _kinds_ of things it doesn’t know how to do, and it knows it would rather do them for the captain than anyone else. It doesn’t care about pain or danger, only that the captain be satisfied with its performance.

It tells the captain that.

The captain _whines_. 

.

.

.

The captain will not look at the asset anymore. He has retreated to the bathroom and locked the door. The asset, for lack of anything else, is standing on the other side. 

The captain moans in pain. He smells less and less like sugar, and more and more _burnt_. Something in the asset is growing increasingly alarmed. 

“Captain,” the asset tries. The captain does not respond. 

Two hours and twenty-nine minutes. 

.

.

.

The captain smells burnt. _Carbonized_. The asset thinks it’s going to throw up. 

It just needs to talk to him. It just needs him to _answer_.

It doesn’t know how to make him answer. Somewhere in its programming there must be a way, because somewhere in its programming it _knows_ the captain, but nothing helpful is forthcoming and the captain smells more and more burnt with each passing moment and the phone is nowhere near arriving and the asset wants to tear down the _door_. It doesn’t care how much the captain punishes it after, it just needs to _see_ him.

“Captain,” the asset says, metal fingers twitching and recalibrating. “You’re injured, you fucking stupid punk. Come _out_.” 

“I’m fine,” the captain lies. The asset barely restrains itself from punching the door down. 

“Tell me what to say,” it says. “You’re hurt. I want to _help_.” 

The captain moans in pain. The asset doesn’t think it’s ever wanted to help anything before, but right now it wants it very badly indeed. It can’t break down the door, though, because the captain shut it in here for a reason. Not a reason the asset understands, but a reason all the same. 

The captain didn’t gag it, though.

“Let me help,” it says. “Tell me what you need.” 

Two hours and two minutes. 

.

.

.

“Captain,” the asset says, and the captain moans. The sound comes from down low and echoes; he might be in the bathtub. The asset isn’t sure, though, and not being sure is making it want to climb the _walls_. The captain didn’t take food or water with him, didn’t take the first aid kit with him, won’t let the asset _help_ \--

The asset’s fingers have been squeezing the doorknob for so long and so hard that it’s warped into the shape of its grip, and still the captain won’t let it out.

It’s going to lose its _mind_. It barely _has_ a mind, and it’s going to lose it. It’s going to go crazy and tear down this door and throw itself at the captain’s feet and--and--

And it doesn’t know what it’ll do then. Beg? Plead? 

_(touch him, that one part of the asset that keeps wanting the strangest things says. touch him, and touch him, and TOUCH him.)_

He would touch the captain everywhere, if it would fix this. 

“Captain,” the asset says again. “Let me help.” 

“I’m _fine_ ,” the captain manages. If he didn’t say it through gritted teeth, the asset is a noncombatant. 

“You’re a goddamn liar,” it says, and the captain laughs painfully.

“I _love_ you,” the captain says. The asset’s whole arm jerks. It only barely keeps itself from ripping the door right off its hinges, and something in the knob makes a damning crunching sound. It’s going to need replaced.

“Let me out,” the asset says, and the captain laughs that pained laugh again. 

“You’re not locked in,” he says. And it’s not. The entire rest of the world is open to the asset, it knows.

But as long as it’s the captain on the other side of the door, as long as it’s the captain that it can’t touch, then the asset is in a prison.

“Let me _out_ ,” it repeats, rattling the mutilated handle.

“No,” the captain says this time, and the asset buries its forehead against the door and bites back a sound that it’s sure would otherwise be a scream. It needs to help. It’s _supposed_ to help. 

“You’re my _responsibility_ ,” it says, and the captain says nothing at all. 

.

.

.

The room stinks like a firebomb went off in a bakery. The asset’s metal fingers have clawed long, narrow lines into the door. The phone has been silent, and so has the captain. 

. . . the phone has been silent. 

The asset turns away from the door for the first time, and stares at the phone. It walks over to it. 

It dials the number the captain dialed. 

“Steve?” a voice it knows but doesn’t remember says--male, and concerned.

“The captain is injured,” it says. “He is refusing treatment.” 

“Oh Jesus,” the voice on the phone says, sounding alarmed. The asset hears the other familiar voice in the background: “Is that _Barnes_?” 

“He is refusing treatment,” the asset repeats in frustration. “He’s my responsibility. I have to _help_.” 

“‘Help’,” the voice on the phone repeats warily.

“You said you could talk him through it,” the asset says. “Tell me what to say.” 

“Give me the phone, Sam,” the first voice says.

.

.

.

“Steve,” the asset says as it lays a careful hand on the bathroom door, because the voice--Natasha--insisted it call the captain that, along with any pet names that occur to it. The asset isn’t entirely sure it knows what a pet name is, but it’s going to do its best. “Steve, sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m gonna take care of you.” 

The noise the captain makes is _agonized_. Natasha told the asset to expect that, so it doesn’t rip the door open. It pets the door, though, because it can’t pet Steve. Natasha told it to pet him, if he let it out. 

“It’s alright, baby,” the asset says. “I know it hurts. You’re being so _good_ for me, though.” 

“Fucking--who the _hell_ did you call?” the captain pants. 

“Natasha,” the asset says, and the captain hisses. 

“You don’t have to do this, Buck,” he says roughly.

“Are you gonna open the door?” the asset asks. 

“No.” 

“Then I’m doing this,” the asset says, wondering how the captain could think it would ever do anything else. “It’s okay, sweetheart. C’mon, you’re so quiet. Let me hear you.” 

“I’m _fine_ ,” the captain practically keens, and the asset rubs its forehead against the door.

“I know you are, baby,” it says-- _croons_ , really. The asset didn’t know it knew how to croon, but apparently it does. “I like it when you let me take care of you, though. You’re so good for me when you do.” 

“Bucky,” the captain says, stifling a moan. 

“I’m right here, sweetheart.” The asset nuzzles the door again. It can’t touch the captain, so the door will have to do. “You touching yourself?” 

_“Bucky,”_ the captain chokes. The asset assumes that’s a “yes”, though it doesn’t know why it’s so important. Natasha told it to make sure the captain did it, though. The asset would rather be the one touching the captain, but . . . 

“That’s my good little omega,” it croons, and the captain _moans_. Maybe the captain won’t let it out, but at least he’s listening. 

One hour and fifty minutes to go.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/)


End file.
